


Velvet

by intravenusann



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Body Horror, Crossdressing, Dancing, F/M, Fake Marriage, Formalwear, Genderbending, Lingerie, M/M, Obscurial Credence Barebone, Scars, Trans Character, not really fake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 20:19:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11238435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intravenusann/pseuds/intravenusann
Summary: A few months after Percival Graves’ return to society, the New York Ghost prints a simple announcement of his marriage. Hardly any scandal could overshadow the work of Gellert Grindelwald, and so the witches and wizards of the Eastern Seaboard glance at the name — something Greek, a woman — and shrug.





	Velvet

A few months after Percival Graves’ return to society, the New York Ghost prints a simple announcement of his marriage. Hardly any scandal could overshadow the work of Gellert Grindelwald, and so the witches and wizards of the Eastern Seaboard glance at the name — something Greek, a woman — and shrug.

“He wouldn’t be the first,” some men say.

“After everything he’s been through,” some women say.

Weeks after the announcement, the former Director of Magical Security steps out to dine with his bride and the rumors speak of a dark-haired young thing, tall and slim and solemn.

“Well,” Chief Auror Limus says, “he did always seem particularly fond of Tina Goldstein.”

The Graveses dine out once a week and even sometimes go dancing. 

Women openly envy the boyish silhouette that the young Mrs. Graves makes in her evening frocks — high, square necklines that accent the pearls draped down her bosom; gauzy sleeves that show her pale shoulders. Almost always, she wears silk gloves up to her elbows with her silver wedding band over the top on her left hand.

More unusual: Percival Graves wears a wedding band as well. 

But every man who has seen the way Mrs. Graves looks at him agrees they’d wear a bit of jewelry to please a soft-eyed beauty like that.

For a while, the jokes turn from what price Percival Graves paid in dragots to bring the young Mrs. Graves over from whatever obscure, Grecian island bore her to what other limb he must have sacrificed to secure her loyalty.

By the summer, Percival and Salome Graves are among the most anticipated guests invited to MACUSA’s solstice ball.

\--

In December, a quivering thing made of more darkness than flesh crept under the door of a brownstone in lower Manhattan.

The wards were set to stop men and magic, but what was left of Credence Barebone was not quite either of those things.

The darkness resolved itself into the shape of Credence as best it could. It walked tenderly up the stairs to where it knew the bedroom was. At this witching hour, it did not expect to find the man at home awake. But Percival Graves no longer slept well without a dreamless draught. 

The Mr. Graves that Credence remembered was clean-shaven and broad-shouldered. He dressed well always and touched firmly with two hands. The man in the upstairs bedroom, sitting at the a writing table in his silk dressing gown, had a greying beard and a forearm that ended in an angry scar.

It was such a sight that the darkness was struck with its first human feeling: confusion.

Before Percival Graves could raise his left hand, the darkness turned into a man whose ill-fitting clothes hung in tatters from his fractured body.

“Credence?” Mr. Graves said, in the same voice that Credence remembered.

“What happened to you?” Credence asked.

“Credence,” Mr. Graves said.

Graves rose from the writing desk and Credence stumbled forward on more solid feet. The two met somewhere in the middle of the room. Between Credence’s torn clothing and Percival’s dressing gown, their skin brushed. Percival Graves’ hand shook slightly as he touched Credence’s cheek, where black lines crept up from his neck like cracks in shattered glass. Credence laid his palm over the man’s arm and traced his thumb along the ragged, red line where it ended.

“Does it hurt?”

The answer became lost between the shape of their lips. The breath that Credence stole from Percival’s lungs felt like the first he had ever drawn. It stabbed at the insides of his ribs like knives.

When Percival’s hand traced the spiderwebs of darkness down Credence’s throat and chest, Credence’s ruined clothes fell away and it felt like magic. 

Percival Graves kissed the darkness that held together Credence’s body with an open mouth, moving like a man no longer afraid of dying. Credence shoved the dressing gown off Graves’ back with magic so forceful the delicate silk tore. 

“Sorry,” he said.

“You have magic,” Percival said. “You  _are_ magic.” 

His lips brushed over a vein of darkness across Credence’s breastbone. His beard scratched Credence’s skin until it broke out into gooseflesh. Tearing away the silk dressing gown exposed a map of livid scars for Credence’s hands to explore. Percival’s body was a country he had longed to travel and nothing could dissuade him now. His skin, a freshly scarred landscape, still seemed a land flowing with milk and honey. Credence ached to drink this man down.

“How are you here?” Percival said. “I thought you had been killed.” 

On his skin, Credence tasted salt.

“I came here to kill you,” he said.

It had to be said, but Percival Graves pulled away all the same. He looked at Credence, at his naked chest all held together by the darkness he’d held inside him for twenty odd years, and he was not afraid. He was not angry, either. The corners of his tempting mouth rose and he smiled at Credence in a way that his beard could not hide.

“But it’s not you,” Credence said. “It wasn’t you, was it?”

Graves’ beard scratched the skin on his neck and his chest as he kissed his way down  Credence’s skin.

“If it would make you feel better,” he said. “I couldn’t think of a more fitting death.”

Credence had no answer for that except to kiss Graves so hard it sent both down to the floor of the man’s bedroom. The rest of his clothing was so easy to push away, exposing so much skin shot through with darkness like veins. Credence found the scars around Percival Graves’ throat with his lips. 

“What’s been done to us?”

It didn’t matter. It did not even matter whether they made it into bed or not. Credence Barebone was a hunger barely contained, with darkness leaking out between his ribs like smoke and oil. He felt himself dissolving under the press of Percival Graves’ lips. Their hands worked together to strip away what little clothing stood between their bodies with more urgency than grace. Seams split in fabric and skin. 

This was not what Credence had come here to do, but as he ground himself down against Percival’s cock and let his darkness surround them both, he did not regret it. Magic leaked out of his skin with every shudder of his body. Every moan caught in Percival’s teeth was a spell, a curse, an enchantment.

The bedframe and writing desk shuddered. The scraps of their clothing strewn about them began to float in the air. The room stirred with darkness and magic. 

For the first time in his life, when Credence felt himself falling apart it was with pleasure.

His orgasm spilled against Percival’s skin. He clutched the man against him with both hands and let his mouth be devoured. The darkness around them sparked with orange flame.

His body relaxed in the aftermath, and with it the storm of the Obscurus subsided. His body became whole again — or close to it. His chest was like a perfect vase, once smashed and now held together with something dark and almost sparkling.

Percival held him like something more precious than rubies.

\--

The crêpe de Chine dress slides into place over a chemise held together with lace and silk. The weight of velvet and gold lamé details press down little flowers made of ribbon on the bosom of the chemise. 

The young Mrs. Graves sits and applies her makeup in a looking glass that advises she pair this dress — ordered from Berlin and tailored to fit in New York — with a pair of hammered gold cuffs that will encircle her gloved wrists. 

“I agree,” she tells the mirror, once she’s properly curled her eyelashes and rouged her lips. 

Her gloves reach up to her elbows and fit perfectly to the shape of her slim arms and long fingers. The silver wedding band stands out sharply against black velvet. The gold upon her skirt and at her wrists burns like a fire against the midnight black of her dress and gloves; her ring is the bright splinter of a new moon.

“No stockings, darling?” Percival asks.

He crowds into the space upon the bench before her bureau and looking glass. His left arm encircles her waist as he kisses the side of her perfumed throat.

“It’s summer,” she says.

“All the same,” he says, “isn’t it rather…”

He pauses and tries to catch her eye in their reflection.

“Risqué?”

“It’s sensible fashion, Mr. Graves,” she says.

“Is that so, Mrs. Graves?” he says. “In the days of my youth, all the fashionable ladies wore stays and petticoats.”

“That was some time ago,” she says.

“And I quite appreciate the changes of modern fashion,” he says.

“Yet, you don’t wear any yourself,” she says.

“Would you prefer me to?” he asks.

She glances at him sideways. His hand moves from her waist down to her hip and then her thigh, touching the seam where black velvet and silk meets gold. Beneath the dress, there is almost nothing. The thought plays lightly upon both their minds.

“I would prefer you to finish dressing, no matter the fashion,” she says. “But you know that I love you just as you are.”

Percival bows his head. He kisses her collar above the neckline of her dress, then the bare curve of her shoulder.

“I adore you,” he whispers against her pale skin.

His collar is still open and his white waistcoat unbuttoned. His silk tie yet hangs near his dresser. While his young wife has nearly finished, he stays half undone. He could dress to the nines in minutes with magic, but he finds a pleasure that escapes words in having his wife button his starched collar and bib. 

When he begs for her help, pointing out that he has only one hand to her two, she turns on her bench with her bare feet against the smooth, wood floors of the master bedroom. He kneels for her, so that she needn’t get up. There is something exquisite about her velvet gloves against the satin lapels of his jacket.

And then, of course, he is in the perfect position to hold her bare calf in one hand. Her skin is smoother than silk, paler than ivory. His fingers slide up to the fold of her knee.

“I’ve no idea how I’ll get through this ridiculous ball when you aren’t even wearing stockings,” he says.

The young Mrs. Graves lifts her foot and runs the naked arch of it up along the soft fabric of his trousers. Fitting the cut of his tuxedo, the waist of Percival’s trousers sits nearly at his ribs, but she is so impudent as to run her toes up under his jacket and against his white waistcoat. Her knee rises high enough that he might catch a glimpse of her chemise.

“Perhaps it would be best for us to distract ourselves before the ball,” she says. “That we might forestall any distractions in public.”

He pushes the hem of her dress up until the heavy fabric slides down the milky length of her thigh. His fingers follow. 

“How is it that I married someone both younger and wiser than myself?” he asks.

She smiles, the smallest movement of her red lips. Even as she pushes herself to the very edge of her bureau bench, she is something dark and enigmatic. He pushes her dress up with his hand and she easily alights her legs over his shoulders. 

With both arms, he pulls her closer. His hand grips her dress at the small of her back. She pulls the hem of her skirt up higher so that he can see how flushed she is beneath the ribbons and lace of her chemise. He kisses her inner thighs. Their breathing matches — rough and too quick. He presses his face between her legs to taste her through the gauzy fabric of her underthings.

“Percival,” she says, her voice rising into a soft whine.

He pushes aside the delicate fabric with the side of his nose, catching it between his teeth even. He presses open mouthed kisses to her bare, flushed skin. Her breathing catches in the back of her throat. The room grows a bit dimmer. A gilded metal tube of rouge rolls off the bureau and clatters against the floor.

“We ought to hurry,” she says, as he takes her into his mouth.

He groans at the taste of her, wet and sharp with salt. Nothing can dissuade him so long as her gloved hands touch his scarred face so gently. Her caresses shiver as the rest of her body does. Behind his head, her toes curl and uncurl in the open air.

“Please,” she begs. “I want you inside me.”

When he finally pulls himself away, his mouth is wet and red. 

The color in her cheeks, when she looks down at him, has nothing to do with makeup.

“Anything for you, my dear,” he says.

They rush into a kiss. His wet lips smudge the red color on her mouth. In a hurry, she puts her feet back down on the ground and stands up only to turn around. She leans over the bench and looks over her shoulder as she lifts up her dress. 

“Darling,” he says, his voice deep and rough as he bends over her, “would you be so kind as to hold your chemise out of the way as well? I’d hate to tear it by accident.”

Her breath comes too quickly, her ribs rising and falling like a pulse. Mutely, she holds her dress with one gloved hand and gently pulls the more delicate fabric of her chemise aside with the other.

There’s smoke and darkness in the air. The looking glass rattles in its frame. 

When he touches her again, his fingers are slick by magic. He presses into her easily with one and then a second follows. He props himself on his elbow so that he doesn’t crush her with his own body as he breathes against the back of her neck. He tells her how beautiful she is as he moves his fingers inside her until she’s so wet it runs down her inner thigh. 

“Please,” she says. 

She looks back at him and her eyes are so brilliantly white when framed by pitch black lashes, perfectly curled. 

He takes his fingers away and slowly, carefully presses his hard cock into her in their place. He’s undone half her work making him look proper for the ball, which they’ll now be late to.

Still, he takes his time with her. 

Darkness like oil bleeds across her pale skin and touches him while her gloved hands are busy clutching at her clothing. She grabs at him like this, still careful of his own fine clothes.

An intimate name slips falls from his open mouth and into the curve of her ear. Her perfect, dark fingerwaves have fallen into disarray. Her bare knees are scraped red against the wood floor.

“Credence,” he says. 

Beneath him, she shudders and moans. The darkness retreats back into her skin and bones, disappearing under the black velvet of her dress.

He stills while she goes completely tense and rigid. When he tries to move again, she whimpers very softly. She tries to swallow the sound, but they are pressed so closely together that he hears her anyway.

He pulls out, causing her to bite down on a whine. For only a few thrusts, he presses himself against her instead of inside. His wet cock rubs against her skin and the delicate chemise until he comes with a groan.

Semen slicks the wood floor beneath them.

With magic, he can easily right their clothing and clean them both up. Percival runs his hand over his wife’s bare knees to heal the scraped skin. He kisses her flushed cheek afterwards.

“You indulge me too much,” he tells her.

“Kiss me again,” she says, “before I fix my mouth.”

They arrive at the ball fashionably late, with the young Mrs. Graves upon her husband’s arm. The rosy blush of their marriage still colors the height of her cheeks.

\--

The morning after Credence Barebone, who had survived death, fell upon Percival Graves, who had survived captivity, the two sat in Mr. Graves’ parlor drinking coffee and having a conversation.

With Credence’s help, Percival’s scarred face had been shaved clean of its grey beard. Credence sat in a wingback chair with brass nails accenting the brown leather and wore one of Percival’s silk dressing gowns in place of the clothing they had destroyed the night before.

“You’ll need a new wardrobe,” Percival Graves said, as though anything Credence had before could constitute an old wardrobe.

“And a new identity,” he continued. “Thankfully, I met more than one dedicated and talented forger before my unexpected retirement. I don’t suggest you take to such a life yourself, but it seems a small crime to conceal you from MACUSA given —”

He looked at Credence, who held his cup of coffee with both hands and did not avoid his gaze.

“Everything,” he said, sighing. The arrogance in Percival’s posture sagged with his broad shoulders. 

“Who do you want to be?” he asked the slouching young man sitting across from him. 

The question hung philosophically in the silence between them.

“I mean,” he said, waving his hand. “If you could be anyone? If you could go anywhere, Credence, where would you go? I could arrange it for you.” 

When he finished his coffee — and after he’d allowed Percival Graves to continue to talk at length about nothing of merit — Credence set his cup down carefully on the side table.

“I don’t want to leave New York,” he said.

“Alright,” Percival said. “Then you can stay with me, I think that's the least I can do. Perhaps as a ward? You're still young enough.”

He could no longer bring himself to meet Credence’s stare.

“There is the concern that someone might recognize you, of course.”

In the silence that stretched out after that, Percival sent their empty coffee cups through the air by magic and then rose from his seat to take a serious look at a nearby bookshelf.

The sound of Credence’s voice made him turn on the heel of his shoe.

“I don't think,” Credence said, “I would like people to think I am your bastard son or your prostitute.”

“That's not what —” The weight of Credence’s gaze stopped him short.

“If I live with you and we continue a carnal relationship, perhaps it could be,” Credence said, “as husband and wife.”

While a range of expressions played themselves out on the face of Percival Graves, Credence sat in place with his back hunched up.

“Well,” Percival said, finally. “You're certainly beautiful enough, I think. I mean, if you're willing to do it. I'm honored you'd even want to pretend to be married to me.”

“If you're faking my papers, everything is already pretend,” Credence pointed out.

“Yes,” Percival said. “Of course, of course.”

Over the next few days, they stumbled through the details together. Credence wore borrowed clothes and nodded as Percival explained the politics and economics and paperwork of immigration. There would be photos. There would be a lot of forged documents. 

“With your complexion,” he said, “I think you pass more for Greek than Polish. Do you know anything of your family line?”

Credence met him mostly with silence. Until Percival spoke of names.

“I think Persephone,” Percival said. “It’s the name of a minor Greek goddess.”

Credence frowned.

“Not familiar with Greek mythology?” Percival asked.

Credence looked at him from the corner of his eye, then returned to reading a book on beginner’s charms. 

“Persephone was the daughter of the goddess of the harvest,” Percival explained. “She was regarded as exceptionally beautiful.”

At this, he reached out for Credence and the motion drew Credence’s eye. He watched as Percival realized his mistake and withdrew his right arm. He touched Credence’s chin with his left hand and tucked his right arm behind his back. 

“One day, she wandered into the land of the dead, an understandably dark and dreary place,” he continued. “There, the lord of the dead, Hades, offered her hospitality, while Persephone’s mother grew frantic in the land of the living.”

Credence looked up at Percival.

“The Greeks believed that the four seasons were a result of Persephone’s disappearance,” he told Credence. His thumb brushed against Credence’s lower lip.

“She spent some of her time with her mother, during which her mother let the earth flourish with spring and summer,” he said. “Then, she went to the land of the dead as Hades’ wife, who Homer called dread Persephone, and winter fell over the earth.”

Credence sighed. “I don’t think I care for it.”

Percival’s hand left his face and the man stepped away. “Well, let me know if there’s something you prefer.”

He closed the book and stood to follow Percival.

“Salome,” Credence said, forcing the man whose clothes he wore on his back to look at him again.

“And who is that?” Percival asked. “I believe there's some English play with that title.”

“You’re unfamiliar with the Gospels, Mr. Graves?” Credence asked, the soft tone of his voice carrying no obvious judgment. But Percival understood, then, how he might have made the younger man feel.

“Please,” he said. “Familiarize me with this Salome.”

The corner of Credence’s mouth twitched.

“She was a beautiful young woman in the days of Christ, the daughter of the king and the wife of the king’s brother, who was a wicked woman,” Credence explained. He moved closer to Percival as he spoke, in careful and deliberate steps.

“A prophet of the Lord, John, had spoken out about the king and his wicked wife, Herodias, and so they had imprisoned him, but the king was unwilling to kill him,” Credence said. “The king was not as wicked as his wife.”

He reached out for Percival’s right arm. 

“At a feast for the king, Salome performed a dance which seduce the king, her own father,” Credence said. “He promised Salome that he would give her anything that she asked for, but she did not know what to ask for, so she sought the advice of her wicked mother who asked for the head of John the Baptist.”

Credence stood close enough then that his breath intermingled with Percival’s. He kept his head bowed slightly, but he still looked into the man’s eyes. His hand rested upon Percival’s pinned sleeve, so that his thumb found the scar beneath the fabric. 

“And did she get it?” Percival asked.

“Yes,” Credence said. 

“Do the Gospels say how this girl, this seductress, reacted to receiving a man’s severed head?” he asked.

“No,” Credence said. “Well, it is written that after it was delivered to her on a platter and she gave it to her mother.”

“And that’s who you’d like to be named after?” 

“I think it suits me.”

The dress, which Percival Graves commissioned from a very discreet squib in the East Village, took nearly as long to make and tailor to Credence’s body as the paper which created the identity of one Salome Hekatos, age twenty-two years. 

Percival Graves’ money and status afforded him the privilege of demanding a judge and the court’s witness come to his home to marry him to Credence, who wore a veil as delicate as spider’s silk and clutched a dripping bouquet of lilies and vines in two gloved hands.

Credence wore the dress and gloves for weeks afterward, until Percival agreed to have the original seamstress make more. And even then, the novelty of the white silk and lace covering the darkness roiling under pale skin never quite faded.

The newspaper announced their marriage. 

The couple went forth into as much of a public life as either could stomach.

Other young witches, especially the wealthier ones who attended the same clubs as the Graveses, began to wear gloves out in the evenings. The married ones wore their rings over the top.

“I could just easily buy you a wardrobe of men’s clothing,” Percival offered only once.

“It would be suspicious, wouldn’t it?” Credence asked, eyes lined with kohl. “Besides, if you could remake yourself completely, Mr. Graves, wouldn’t you make yourself into someone that you wanted to be?”

\--

All through the night of the ball, the young Mrs. Graves refuses to let go of her husband’s arm.

Each one of the hundreds of people in attendance at MACUSA’s solstice ball wants to see the disgraced Percival Graves and his mysterious, young wife. Across the floor, they whisper like the schoolchildren they never quite stopped being. Holding snifter glasses of giggle water, men approach Percival first and rarely earn even a glance from his wife.

She confesses, “I’d much rather be dancing.”

“Seems a waste of the band if we don’t,” he tells her.

They aren’t the best dancers on the floor, but they never so much as glance at anyone else. In the first hours of the ball, most dancers keep their bodies apart and dance in slow, artful steps. But there’s free-flowing alcohol — the privilege of the magical in New York — and the various secretaries and junior aurors can’t keep themselves from more risqué dances. 

The young Mrs. Graves doesn’t need any sort of drink to entice her into pressing her cheek against her husband’s face and being held tight in his arms as they step around the floor. A more complicated tango is beyond them. Dances with jumps and dips equally intimidating. But who needs fancy moves? They are in love; anyone can see it.

“I’m an old man,” Percival protests just before midnight. 

The dancing around them has grown only more wild, with the band clearly enjoying the opportunity to play swinging, stomping music.

The couple stops for oysters and canapes.

More than one woman comes to kiss the young Mrs. Graves’ cheek and tell her how lovely her dress, her shoes, her rouge, her dancing, and her hair are. Not all of them mean it and she is no better at this smalltalk than she is at the tango.

“Your English is so good,” the wife of an agency director says, touching her bare shoulder. “I never would have thought you so articulate given your age.”

“I’m sure her husband would love to hear that, Lucille,” another woman says, stepping close. “Hello, Salome, is it? We haven’t met — a true misstep on my part.”

She blinks. “Hello.”

“Seraphina Picquery,” the woman says, offering her hand as Lucille disappears into the crowd like a vole into its burrow.

“Madame President,” she says, jaw tight. Her bare shoulders hunch up toward her ears.

The woman, in her low-cut dress that drips with glass beads and gold lame split to the upper thigh, laughs. She finds the nearest table to set down her champagne coupe. 

“Your husband would only call me that if he was pissed off,” Seraphina says. “I hardly expect you too.”

“Do you prefer Seraphina, then?” she asks.

“Do you prefer Salome?” Seraphina asks.

“Yes,” she says.

“Well then,” Seraphina says.

With a beckoning hand that doesn’t reach out and touch her, Seraphina draws her away from Percival’s side with only a few glances over her shoulder. Percival smiles like a blessing. Just because he hasn’t spoken with Seraphina in so many months does not mean he doesn’t trust her. Even when she’s a bit drunk.

“Percival only knows the old dances,” Seraphina says. “From before the war. Let me show you something modern.”

And so — in the moment that everyone attending the solstice ball will talk about for weeks to come — the president shows the young wife of her disgraced former advisor how to kick up her heels when she dances. They swivel their feet and knees and wave their hands like they’re both schoolgirls.

“Wasn’t that fun?” Seraphina asks, breathless.

With a tight smile, she cannot help but agree. She is deeply grateful for the straps on her shining leather shoes.

Together, they walk back in the direction of Percival.

“Seraphina,” he says, when they are within earshot. “You didn’t tell me Miss Tina had returned from Paris.”

She’s drunk enough to say, “It’s hard to keep you informed when I never hear from you. Had to read about your wedding in the paper, Percival.”

“My apologies, Seraphina,” he says, the most he’s even wanted to say to her in quite some time.

They smile at each other, as old friends do.

Meanwhile, Tina Goldstein in her midnight blue dress stands with her mouth hanging open.

All the color that isn’t from makeup drains from the young Mrs. Graves’ face. She longs to clutch her husband’s arm and hide her face against his shoulder. But she cannot look away from Tina’s equally stricken face.

“Is it —” Tina says. Her voice catches in her throat. She stammers.

“Is it r-really you?” Tina asks.

“Do you know each other?” Seraphina asks. At this, Percival scowls in confusion. 

“Yes,” his wife says. That’s enough of an answer to send Tina stumbling forward on her heeled shoes.

“It’s really you,” she says.

The two ladies embrace and tears spring to Tina’s eyes.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” Tina says. 

“I looked for you,” she says, her rasping voice becoming more of a croak. The darkness threatens to appear above the collar of her velvet dress. But then another hand comes to rest on her bare shoulder, familiar fingers tracing down to the hem of her gloves.

“It’s so good to see you,” Tina says.

“Salome,” she offers.

“Great to meet you, Salome,” Tina says, smiling. “Call me Tina.”

She blinks. “I’m very happy to see you again, Tina.”

Tina Goldstein releases her in a rush and laughs with an edge of hysteria.

“Did you meet in Europe?” Seraphina asks.

“Yes!” Tina says. “Yes! That! Absolutely, in…”

“Greece,” she supplies. 

“How lovely that you two could be reunited in New York,” Percival says.

She is happy to collapse into his arms, weak with feeling.

“We’ll have to invite you over for dinner,” he offers. “Both of you, if you like.”

He looks to his wife. “Would you like that, Mrs. Graves?”

“Very much, Mr. Graves,” she says.

Overwhelmed by a bubbling joy so intense that her shoulders shake, she smiles at her husband. Her white teeth peek out between her red lips. He smiles back, looking only at her, until the skin creases around his eyes. His arms tighten about her waist.

**Author's Note:**

> [This is the dress](https://fascinationstreetvintage.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/evening-dress-8.jpg) Credence wears to the summer ball.
> 
> [Guess who?](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Anonymous_Fic_Game)


End file.
